In addition to comments I have offered elsewhere . . .
I am not well acquainted with how Covid-19 is currently affecting efforts to travel internationally.
If you are in the U.S. Or if you can travel to the U.S. And you possess an expired PR card. All you need to do is travel to a crossing point into Canada and you will be allowed to return to Canada. (Assuming your PR card application did not result in the termination of your PR status.)
If you have not been IN Canada for at least 730 days within the five years as of the day you actually arrive at the PoE, you are in breach of the RO and of course subject to being Reported and issued a Departure Order. Again, as long as the PR card application did not result in the termination of your PR status, you will then be allowed to continue into Canada. You will have 30 days to file an appeal. You will be able to stay in Canada, work, go to school, and so on, as long as the appeal is pending.
You can and should, IF QUESTIONED about RO compliance at the PoE, present your H&C case. As noted elsewhere, I have no idea why you left Canada this year or how long you have been outside Canada, but you did and it is what it is . . . up to when you left Canada this year it looked like you had a very strong H&C case. If this absence was very brief and you have been in Canada almost long enough to be back in compliance with the RO (almost two years but a little short still), you should still have a strong H&C case and a good chance they will NOT report you at the PoE. But the longer you have been abroad, and in particular, for example, IF it appears you have been in Canada to attend school and otherwise you were going *home* and thus do not appear to be settled in Canada, that could weaken your H&C case. Very, very difficult to forecast how H&C cases will be decided. But we do know one particularly important thing: the sooner you return to Canada the better your chances are you can keep PR status.
